


come to the waters

by Imkerin



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Complicated Relationships, Liverpool F.C., M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-31
Updated: 2015-10-31
Packaged: 2018-04-27 19:56:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5061913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imkerin/pseuds/Imkerin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Luis and Xabi could have found a home at Liverpool, but <i>home</i> was never what either of them wanted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	come to the waters

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Anemoi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anemoi/gifts).



"How is Barcelona?" Xabi's voice is smooth; when Luis glances over, he's smiling.

"Good," Luis says. "And Munich?"

"Good," Xabi says, the same understatement in the same words. He sips his drink slowly, thoughtfully, watching Luis in a way that's not quite challenging enough for him to take offense, his eyes sliding away calculated seconds before it would have been too much.

Across the room, Stevie is talking to Fernando and Carra, animated and interested but not quite loud enough for Luis to make out what he's saying. Xabi's gaze pulls his own with it inextricably. 

They look happy enough, Luis thinks. On the pitch, when the Kop had started singing for him, when his arm had slid tentatively around Luis’s shoulders, Torres had looked more than a bit like a stunned pigeon: like he could have choked to death on the surprise of their acceptance and fallen out of the sky. Only the edges of that are still lingering now, lit up by Stevie's wide grin and the inaudible burr of Carra’s voice.

After a minute, when Xabi hasn't said anything more, Luis glances over just in time to see him still watching them. His eyes are shuttered, his smile still bland, but there's something about the particular set of his shoulders and the brace of his jaw that Luis knows down to his bones. It's a peculiar kind of want, the kind that's more than half-hatred; he'd seen the ghost of it in the locker room last week, but in Xabi it's the real thing, cold as steel.

Luis runs his tongue across the back of his lip, as if he had a split he could worry at, as if that need could cut flesh and leave wounds. He can almost feel it, the bitter-copper taste of it, like some kind of phantom limb that was never his - even though it's becoming more and more certain that he'll have silver behind him before the year is out. "You'll see Barcelona for yourself in a month," he says. Xabi looks back at him, one dark brow cocking up slightly in a way that almost completely masks that too-familiar hunger in him, and Luis smiles.

"I suppose I will," Xabi says. He raises his glass to Luis, a self-consciously ironic little toast. "To make up for missing El Clásico."

" _Do_ you miss it?" he asks, less because he wants to know the answer than because he wants to know what he'll say, how he'll say it.

"El Clásico?"

"Sure," he says. He smiles wider, showing his teeth. On him, it looks different than on Xabi; he knows that. He knows what they say about him. "El Clásico. Real Madrid. La Liga."

"Ah." Xabi finishes his drink. He toys with the glass, looking down at it, rolling it between his fingers, crystalline and empty. "The competition," he says. It’s more of a dodge than an answer, but when he looks up again, he looks at Luis and not back at Stevie, which is more than enough for Luis to count it as a win in the face of today's draw. 

Luis reaches out and takes the glass out of his hand. It's easy because Xabi doesn't try to stop him; his eyes are sharp enough, but there’s no real hunger there, and the attention he means to be piercing feels feather-light on Luis’s shoulders. “Sure,” he says again, setting the glass down on someone’s table, leaving their hands equally empty. When he glances toward the door, he feels Xabi look along with him and he doesn’t have to ask to know that Xabi will follow him when he leaves, if only for an hour or three.


End file.
